Minneapolis Dethrones Portland As Bike-Friendliest City

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Minneapolis Dethrones Portland As Bike-Friendliest City

There's been an upset at the top of *Bicycling *magazine's annual list of the country's 50 bike-friendliest big cities. Portland, Oregon, long known as the bike-friendliest city in the land, has been dethroned by Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Portland's fall to second place came despite the ambitious $600 million Portland Bicycle Plan 2030 that calls for nearly 700 miles of new bike trails within 20 years. But the change-up at the top should not come as a surprise to many following the rise of the Minneapolis bicycle community.

Previously ranked number two, Minneapolis has been on the forefront of bicycle transportation innovation. The city has an equally ambitious citywide bicycle plan with 43 miles of dedicated on-street bicycle lanes and 84 miles of off-street trails. Another 40 miles are slated to be completed in 2010. The city also has received a silver "Bicycle Friendly Community" award from the League of American Bicyclists.

"I was so excited by this news, I overinflated my bike tires," Mayor R.T. Rybak said of his city taking to top spot, [according to local TV station KARE-11]("I was so excited by this news, I overinflated my bike tires," Mayor R.T. Rybak said. "We). Rybak said the city has "come a long way from when the first bike lanes were striped on our streets back in the 1970s. Biking is now a more attractive and effective way of getting around town, thanks to an ongoing partnership between the city and county governments, the country's best coalition of nonprofits and tens of thousands of active bikers."

"Hey," you say, "my city has lots of cyclists, why aren't we number one?"

Well, Bicycling comes up with this list by first eliminating cities below 100,000 people in population. (There is a ranking of the top-five bike-friendly small cities.) California wasn't allowed to dominate the list, which is why only two cities – San Francisco at No. 6 and Long Beach at No. 23 – made the cut. Bicycling considered a mixture of quantitative criteria including how many miles of bike trails a city has, how much bike parking is available and so forth. Then it used a more qualitative data set that examines how involved in cycling the local government is, how many bike shops there all and the overall bike culture vibe.

Joining Minneapolis and Portland to round out the top five were Boulder, Colorado; Seattle, Washington; and Eugene, Oregon. You may ask who came in at number 50... Well, Rochester, New York rounded out the list.

The list is more than a ranking. It is a call to arms. If your town doesn't appear on the list – or didn't rank as highly as you'd like – *Bicycling *urges you to "use this as an opportunity to do something about it."